With an offensive rebound at the buzzer, Derrick White signed a play that entered in its own right in the postseason books of the best basketball in the world, set the score at 104-103 and Boston forced the celebration of the seventh game with Miami, in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The former Spurs player took the ball after Marcus Smart's failed attempt and, with only 0.1 seconds on the clock, he got it right to the bitterness of a Kaseya Center that had recently gone crazy when their star Jimmy Butler put the Heat ahead with three book shots.
White's basket, according to ESPN Stats & Info, made him the second NBA player to score at the buzzer to win a game when facing elimination and his team is behind on the scoreboard before the shot. Previously, only the legendary Michael Jordan (1989 against the Cavaliers).
"Whatever it takes, with my back against the wall, I'm glad we won," White told NBA on TNT.
Finalist in 2022 (then lost to the Warriors), Boston will seek its ticket to the decisive playoff in the match scheduled for next Monday, where it will enjoy majority support at the TD Garden. Miami, meanwhile, will try to close a task that seemed like a boy's game once they won the first three games.
The history of the championship remembers that none of the 150 matches that ended 3-0 could be overcome, although there were three in which the disadvantaged team tied the situation, and then fell in the seventh match.
Such were the cases of the Knicks against the defunct Rochester Royals (1951), the Nuggets against the Jazz (1994), and the Blazers against the Mavericks (2003).
Incidentally, precisely The Nuggets wait for the winner between Heat and Celtics to determine the champion of the 2022/23 season.
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